Is your company considering whether to implement a Workplace Wellness Program? If so, there are certainly many reasons for doing so. Depending on your needs, a Workplace Wellness Program may help you to achieve goals in areas such as employee satisfaction, employee health, company culture, and more.
However, there has been an increasing level of concern over how companies should structure these types of programs. This is primarily due to compliance requirements, as wellness programs must be designed in a way to not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), HIPAA’s nondiscrimination requirements, and the Affordable Care Act.
However, on April 16th, 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a long-awaited proposed rule on how employers can structure their wellness programs under the ADA.
Here is a brief overview of some of the key elements that were covered in the proposed rule:
- Reasonable Design: A wellness program must be reasonably designed to promote health or prevent disease. A program that collects information on a Health Risk Assessment (HRA) to provide feedback to employees about their health risks, or that uses aggregate information from HRAs to design programs aimed at particular medical conditions is reasonably designed. A program that collects information without providing feedback to employees or without using the information to design specific health programs is not reasonably designed.
- Voluntary Participation: Wellness programs must be voluntary. Employees may not be required to participate in a wellness program, may not be denied health insurance or given reduced health benefits if they do not participate, and may not be disciplined for not participating. Employers also may not interfere with the ADA rights of employees who do not want to participate in wellness programs, and may not coerce, intimidate or threaten employees to get them to participate or achieve certain health outcomes.
- Employee Notice: For wellness programs that are part of group health plans, employers must provide employees with a notice that describes what medical information will be collected as part of the wellness program, who will receive it, how the information will be used and how it will be kept confidential.
- Limited Incentives: For wellness programs that are part of group health plans, employers may offer limited incentives for employees to participate in the programs or to achieve certain health outcomes. Consistent with HIPAA, the amount of the incentive that may be offered for an employee to participate or to achieve health outcomes may not exceed 30 percent of the total cost of employee-only coverage. For example, if the total cost of coverage paid by both the employer and employee for self-only coverage is $5,000, the maximum incentive for an employee under that plan is $1,500.
Additional Information
We hope that you find this brief summary helpful as you seek to understand how the proposed rule may impact your organization’s efforts regarding Workplace Wellness Programs.
For an in-depth look at the proposed rule, we encourage all clients to log-in to the CBGconnect portal and download our full Compliance Bulletin on this topic.
In addition, the EEOC provided a fact sheet and a set of questions and answers regarding this proposed guidance that you may find helpful.